this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023
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Huh. Normally, you'd think when somebody takes longer to rephrase a post than it'd take to read the original they're trying to straw man the hell out of it...
...but no, you mostly got it.
Define "investigative journalism" when it comes to television. Radio? Maybe movies.
At best it's generalist journalism looking into a major issue, like the Ronan Farrow work that resulted in the whole MeToo movement. Other times it's straight-up business journalism, like the mainstream coverage of mergers or tech regulations. There is no reason why gaming can't be treated the same way, and in fact it is, as we saw through the whole Activision/Microsoft merger.
The idea that gaming needs a specific brand of "investigative journalism" as a matter for the daily gaming trades, such as they are, is based on this weird, antagonistic perspective that gaming fandom has about game development and it is, very much, part of the same problem as the hype cycle.
Sometimes, "investigative" journalism comes down to gossip, too, which is less relevant and I do not love. Schreier's brand of "I have insider buddies and they tell me this stuff" coverage can stray into that. He walks the line, for sure. Some of it is genuinely interesting intrahistory, some of it doesn't clear that bar for me.
What I do care about, though, is good journalism, and there are definitely people doing that, including those in-depth, after-the-fact analysis and historical documentaries. If those don't qualify for what you want to see in games journalism, then we just disagree about what is needed.
This is how the sausage is made, unfortunately. Schreier has to work with the same kind of currency any investigative journalist does, and sometimes that means publishing a piece as part of an agreement. I've seen this happen for decades in sports journalism, and in turn, that facilitates a lot of what labor has needed to survive in that industry. Considering professional sports is one of the very last bastions of collective bargaining in my country, I find it easy to overlook there.
Schreier's work has similarly been important for labor in making games, so yeah, while there's garbage sometimes, I have zero problem with it.
Schreier has not published any of his gossipy pieces because he had a deal with anyone, at least that I know of. If what you mean is that he publishes the gossip because that's the red meat what keeps him employed at Bloomberg so he can write more thorough coverage of the really interesting stuff.... well, you have a worse opinion of Schreier than I do.
Honestly, you guys are doing little to get me on board with that sort of thing. From the way you talk about it I'm getting the distinct impression that this sort of "investigative journalism", which often boils down to "game development went poorly for reasons", is only feeding into the antagonistic relationship and not, as I'd hoped, creating more awareness of how the process goes so people can have more informed opinions.